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PowerFox Browser

powerfox.jazzzny.me

11–20 of 51 posts

Re: PowerFox Browser

#11

One thing that seems to be common amongst many of these Firefox forks is they're very difficult to find which official version they're equivalent in functionality to. This one is no exception.

This is actually based on the Goanna web engine (a fork of the Firefox / Gecko web engine) derived from the https://www.basilisk-browser.org/ . You can find out more here - https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=69&p=275829#p2758... .

Re: PowerFox Browser

#12
post #2

This is probably off topic to the browser itself, but a mac of that age due to its limited capabilities is probably best used as a thin client to a modern desktop environment (like a full screen VNC-over-SSH session to a x session and desktop environment running on a linux server) and will be overall a better experience. The screen, keyboard and mouse may be totally fine to use as a thin client.

Better still is to install some Linux on the machine which will make it useable for normal daily tasks. I'm typing this on a 'late 2009' 27" iMac running Debian, on longer train trips I'm using a 2011 Macbook Air also running Debian. No special browsers needed, just install Firefox.

Right, you can definitely do that on any core2duo or later 2008, 2009 vintage Mac. The first gen 2006 macbook pro intel and other 'core duo' from 2006 are 32-bit only so that really limits the x86 linux OS selection for modern use. And PowerPC platforms even less.

Re: PowerFox Browser

#13

One thing that seems to be common amongst many of these Firefox forks is they're very difficult to find which official version they're equivalent in functionality to. This one is no exception.

This is actually based on the Goanna web engine (a fork of the Firefox / Gecko web engine) derived from the https://www.basilisk-browser.org/ . You can find out more here - https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=69&p=275829#p2758... .

Ah, that explains why there is still NPAPI plugin support.

Re: PowerFox Browser

#14
post #2

This is probably off topic to the browser itself, but a mac of that age due to its limited capabilities is probably best used as a thin client to a modern desktop environment (like a full screen VNC-over-SSH session to a x session and desktop environment running on a linux server) and will be overall a better experience. The screen, keyboard and mouse may be totally fine to use as a thin client.

Some of these browsers for older systems will pretend to be a mobile browser. Sites might have a lighter mobile version than desktop version.

Re: PowerFox Browser

#15
Seeing that aqua scrollbar fills me with such joy. This is when tech was joyful and fun. I think what happened to the scrollbar is such a reflection of our industry as a whole. A microcosm.

Re: PowerFox Browser

#18
post #15

Seeing that aqua scrollbar fills me with such joy. This is when tech was joyful and fun. I think what happened to the scrollbar is such a reflection of our industry as a whole. A microcosm.

I remember spending ages as a kid fine tuning my scrollbar css

Re: PowerFox Browser

#19
post #7

There was a similar project called TenFourFox that was halted in 2022: https://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/ https://tenfourfox.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-end-of-tenfourfo... Some 12 years ago I had to order a new motherboard and at that time all I had at hand was some old eMac. I'm not sure if it had 512MB or 1GB of ram installed by previous owner but browsing the Internet was tiresome. Still, both that chunky…

(TenFourFox maintainer) Thanks, glad it was helpful to you. There is some TenFourFox code in this respin which is being used to support the widget code, and there is work in progress to forward-port its JIT. I'm not writing that code but I am advising on it as questions come up.

Re: PowerFox Browser

#20
So grateful for all of the dedicated coders and hackers in this space to keep our old Macs relevant and useable.

PowerFox has tweaks especially for Leopard and Snow Leopard and Mac-quality of life features. You can also try Basilisk, which is the upstream version without those tweaks.

Momiji is another variant targeting Mac OS Mavericks and other targets with ESR Firefox fixes. Works pretty well!

Finally, there is work being done to revive Safari for Mavericks and work to bring Netsurf to MacOS 9.

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